To be fair my Windows experience was far simpler than Linux, if less fulfilling. What got me was a combination of constant attacks on privacy, W11 and the enshittification of the UI as well as general Microsoft corporate tomfoolery (have dealt with them for work, not a fan of their monopolistic EEE tactics).

Finding a good MusicBee alternative on linux. I just dual boot into windows whenever I need to convert FLACs and organize it. Otherwise I'm on Linux 99% of the time now.

What pushed me over the edge was how much worse the user experience became with 8 & 10.

I really disliked the lack of control over updates, settings and defaults being reverted after minor updates, and the constant pushing of Microsoft accounts and services. The data collection and privacy issues certainly didn't help either. I switched from 7 to 10 for a period of time, but eventually started using Linux for everything except for games. I started realizing just how good Linux gaming was getting, and I eventually had one too many issues with my Windows partition and just quit using it entirely.

I don't remember having a lot of the frustrations I hear some talk about when switching, but I think that was because early on I realized I just needed to start figuring out the Linux way of doing things rather than bringing my Windows experience over.

No longer being able to run Windows 7, the pinnacle of Windows.

The Halloween Documents are a set of internal Microsoft memoranda that were leaked to the open-source community in 1998. The documents outlined Microsoft's strategies and attitudes towards open-source software, particularly the growing threat posed by Linux. They are named after the fact that the first document was leaked around Halloween in 1998.

Programming in C and C++ just seemed way easier on Linux at the time.

The assistants at university would frequently distribute virtualbox images with Ubuntu within which we were supposed to do the homework. At some point I decided that just putting Ubuntu on my laptop directly would be easier because GCC is just right there in the repos, plus I was a little interested anyway.

Then it just kept being easy, for Java, Haskell, Scala, Python, everything was just supported nicely. The network simulators we used were Linux native, the course where we were reverse engineering binaries used GDB, Android development was simple with the tools and simulator being in the repos.

That said for gaming I still use Windows. And my workplace forces me to use macOS.

When I was a CS student in the early-mid 90s, my college had Unix only and we had to fight to get a free terminal to complete our assignments.I had a good 486DX with Windows 3.11 and I had heard of Minix, so I could do my assignments in the comfort (?) of my dorm room.

I went to my local technical library to see if they had a box (that sort of places used to carry boxed OSes and specialized software back then). They didn't, but they had this CD with Slackware written on it and the store owner said it was better. So I bought it on a whim.

After many hours and a lot of recompiling the kernel and libraries right and left, the thing finally booted and ran surprisingly stable. My roommate saw it and immediately installed it on his machine. The next days we went buy a couple of 10base2 NICs, some coax and a pair of terminator, and before you know it, we had NFS going.

It was our own Unix network and it was way better than college's :) I never looked back.

I did work with DRDOS as a kernel dev a few years later, which involved reverse-engineering bits of MSDOS 7 (yes, that's the version of MSDOS Windows 95 ran on top of). That's as close to working professionally with MS stuff as I ever got. Other than than, I'm a pure product of the Linux generation baby!

I read the story somewhere about a student from Finland who wrote his own kernel and discussed it with Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

Since I was reading a book of Mr. Tanenbaum at that time, this got me somewhat interested, and when I got the chance, I tried it out.

I started my career on PDP-11/44 and moved to Xenix/Unix/Solaris as I progressed my way through several employers. Windows 3.1 had me as it was a step up from GEMOS and the affair lasted until Windows 95 when I got fed up with having to refresh every computer in my household annually and having to clear out the bloatware. All this time I was missing the low cognitive overhead of running Unix.

An SUSE CD made its way to me and I switched immediately. I was home! And I stayed that way until macOS came out with its BSD core which gave me both a tight GUI and *nix frameworks.

Windows is popular only because of its heavy-handed approach to OEMs and businesses, not because of its technical prowess.

I got interested in Linux in college since it’s used a bunch in physics. I even tried it a bit on my personal laptop. Fast forward to the steam deck releasing and windows just getting worse and worse, I decided to go for it. So far it fulfills all my needs on a home PC. It did require some fiddling to make it work, but now the fiddling and troubleshooting are very minimal and occasional.

I was prepared for it (relatively speaking lol) because I had used it before. I did hop between distros for a bit as well before finally settling on Pop! OS since it’s Ubuntu based, and the support on forums for Ubuntu issues is ubiquitous. I do kind of miss open SUSE sometimes though.

Ads. Specifically, a popup served by the OS about chrome and switching to bing or edge or something like that. I didn't even use chrome, just having it installed was enough for them. Any ads baked into the OS is unacceptable, but that's just so far over the line that I find it insane anyone still uses Windows at all.

I contacted support to complain and their "solution" was to reinstall the OS, so I installed a better one instead.

I was tired of Microsofts monopolistic shenanigans. So when Ubuntu 5.10 came out in 2005, and was extremely well done, it was time to switch to Linux. Because Linux was finally polished and functional enough to actually be at least as good as Windows.
Admittedly there were a period of dual booting for games. But that isn't necessary today, as we now have thousands of games that work on Steam.

You can say that what it took for me, was for Linux to become good enough to use as a daily driver. I'd say today it's a no-brainer.

When Gnome 2 was discontinued, it was a major pain in the ass though, KDE was buggy and Gnome shell was hell (IMO). So I can't say I never looked back, because I did install Windows 7 in frustration. But that was a very short adventure, because Windows is simply so horrible when you get used to Linux. The idiocy of Windows is momentous, and the jumping through hoops fighting Microsoft stupid security features, that won't even allow you a simple thing as changing your default text editor, becomes insanely tiresome and frustrating very quickly.

So it was back to Linux faster than you can say oops (almost).
Now the desktop has become less relevant to me, because I do almost everything through hotkeys. So I rarely navigate the desktop, so as long as I have a decent file manager, I'm 90% OK just having that.

The "AI" garbage on the horizon finally did it for me. I've been using Windows for 30-some-odd years (and DOS before that) and it always had a quirk or two but it mostly just worked, and that was enough for me. Hell, I even jumped on Win 11 when it was still in Insider Preview, just because I wanted the latest. And despite everyone always complaining about 11, for the most part, it did for me as Windows has always done - it just worked, so if it ain't broke, why fix it?

Not that I hated Linux, I just always seemed to have an excuse. "Oh, the last time I tried to install it I was stuck at a CLI" sure, almost 20 years ago. "Well, I'm a huge gamer and Linux just doesn't have the support", "Man, KDE Plasma on the Steam Deck runs great and looks a lot like a fresh Windows install... ahhh, it'd be such a pain to migrate though."

Anyway, I set up Arch on a "dual boot" partition a couple weeks ago I say "dual boot" because I haven't booted into Windows in a week. Feels good, man. I should have done it sooner.

I will say though, if any other potential Windows refugees are reading... Migrate your Steam library to an ext4/btrfs/other Linux partition. You can successfully mount your Windows NTFS partitions. You might even be able to get them to mount as read/write. You might even be able to get Steam to read the directories! But it's not worth the headache, and in my experience it's a lot easier to get Windows to mount a btrfs partition. My Windows install is the last NTFS partition on my system, and I'll keep it around for a while in case I run into something that just won't play nice with Linux, but that's it.

Constant BSODs in Windows XP (probably caused by NVidia drivers), and then by now that's half a lifetime ago and Linux is just my default with Windows being "the alternative that can mostly do the same thing but in less intuitive ways"

I'm aware that at some point sourceforge went down the toilet, but in the early 2000s it seemed to be a pretty reliable website for open source software. I had gone a few years coming across more and more evidence that any software I was downloading from sourceforge was much less likely to be a load of shit than software downloaded anywhere else. At some point I made the connection that maybe open source software is better in general. That made me curious about the experience of using an entire operating system that was open source. Either 2012 or late 2011 I installed Fedora to dual boot with windows (like 70% sure it was win7, might have been vista). Over the next year or two I sampled a bunch of other distros, and also PCBSD (not sure if that still exists) at one point. In retrospect I was really sampling DEs, but I didn't know the distinction.

Discovering the philosophy behind GNU was what led me to abandoning windows entirely. I think I had already had some of the core ideas of free software, albeit in extremely rudimentary forms (gee, these EULAs sure do seem like they're deliberately obfuscated), floating around my head for a while. The concept of free software resonated with me, so that's when I finally removed my windows partition. I stopped distro-hopping and settled on Trisquel for two or three years.

Afterwards, I decided to move to Parabola because I thought it would force me to learn things, but the main thing I learned was how to read documentation just well enough to get everything working by trial-and-error tinkering.

I've kind of moved on from free software at this point. I do still agree with the ideals, but I think the goals are somewhat inconsistent with a capitalist economy to begin with so I'd rather be concerned about that.

Today I use arch and still have no idea what the hell I'm doing, but I've had a stable system for years and I'm too comfortable with it to switch to a friendlier distribution.

I had a two laptop: one main for gaming and a shitty computer for school. I had to code on python. It was easier to setup on linux. I liked KDE. I installed kubuntu on the laptop for school.

As soon as I stopped playing videogames on my main computer I went for linux definitely

Edit: it was 10 years ago

I was a curious 14yo. Tried out OpenSUSE 10.2 (10.3? Can't fully remember) with KDE 3.5 and had a blast.

Why I switched to Linux (on one laptop, so far) from Windows:

1. Enshitification: Such as login interstitials trying to get me to switch to Edge over and over, and more naggy features added to the task bar and stuff

2. End of support: I was on Win10 (Win11 has even more enshitification), so if I was going to be forced off of Win10, I may as well migrate away from Windows (and sooner rather than later).

3. WSL2 sucks (yet more enshitification): it's more isolated from Windows than WSL1 (and other options, such as Cygwin).

Now, I've only switched to Linux on my laptop (full time; no dual boot!), but I see that as a first step towards migrating other computers in the house to Windows. I'm expecting difficulties when I switch the others (like webcam drivers, or lack of ability to use device configuration or firmware update software like for my Logitech Brio webcam). I also use Blue Iris NVR, which is Windows only, and Linux options don't look as good. So 0% Windows is not looking likely for a while.

I had a few false starts before, but MS force-updating me to the objectively worse and user-hostile Windows 8 triggered my latest (and successful) switch.

Nothing special. It was a natural progression to move from UNIX, Solaris, SunOS, and VMS to Linux.

BeOS went under.

Ed: I was a huge apple fan, bought an apple clone from Power Computing. Then Apple revoked the licensing that allowed all the apple clone companies to exist. That's when I went to BeOS which would run on my clone, and got a multicore intel machine too. When BeOS went under I tried Suse. Had kind of a sucky UI in my opinion, but I hung in there with linux as an alternative to windows and went Ubuntu/Debian/Arch/Nixos and I'm still on nixos now. Its pretty much my exclusive OS since I quit my job that required windows 5 or 6 years ago.

I was interested in technology and programming and my mom recommended me to check out a raspberry pi. Her friend's son has one. So my first comouter was a raspberry pi with RaspbianOS when I got my first PC it seemd normal to install something that I was using for the last year and its free. So I installed Pop!_Os, a year later Fedora and a half year later Arch. I've been using Arch for more than 2 years now.

I never “switched” in the sense that yesterday I was windows and today I am linux.

It just happened. I’ve always had some distro or other running on another drive or partition. This includes things like os2 warp that weren’t linux.

But about 4 or so years ago, my games were playable easily on steam, I was able to find Linux packages for work stuff (like teams), and things just generally behaved with no hassle (up until then things worked but they came with hassles).

Meanwhile, windows became a hassle. Microsoft borked my windows install because it forced their crappy store onto a game (literally trashed my installation by clicking “install” - PSO2), every time I turned the pc on I was faced with an update and restart, some of those updates failed (one of them still doesn’t work) - how does an OS update become so poor quality - it’s an OS update, and general enshitification such as ads, nags, and crappy OS design with the clicks…

I just found myself not wanting to use windows, and wanting to use Linux. It happened over time. The last time I logged into windows was three or four months ago just to update the install and keep it fresh. It was a painful 1/2 hour and I’m dreading going back.

EndeavorOS Gnome, light use of the AUR, heavy flatpak use.

Windows Registry

I had recurring issues with registering Bluetooth devices, where they would pair initially but refuse to connect again after a reboot. I couldn't remove the device from saved connections, and registry edits wouldn't save or persist. I'd have to completely uninstall the driver, change the registry, and reinstall the drivers, with restarts between each step, to get it to work for 1-2 days.

Now, having to troubleshoot isn't what turned me away from Windows to Linux. I knew I would run into that plenty on Linux as well, but I came to hate the registry. If I was going to have to go through all this trouble to get things to work, I might as well do it on a system I had more control over. I had worked with different distros on VMs and dual booting before, so when I built a new system, I just skipped Windows entirely.

Videos of the Steamdeck showed me how good gaming on Linux had gotten and that's when I started looking into switching.

I already hated using Windows 10 so didn't take me much convincing to look at alternatives.

I'm not a programmer or work in the I.T. field in anyway. But I have been messing around with computers since I could remember so I'm no stranger to tweaking, breaking and trying to repair things.

Windows 11

20 years ago somebody told me that installing Gentoo would make my computer performant enough to run video games. I no longer play video games, but I have been using GNU/Linux variants ever since.

Windows 10.

The way they rolled it out, and everything they shoved down the throats of anyone that "upgraded"

Honestly? I played around with Linux for a long time inside of VM, but then I moved to a new house and got into "a new life" mood. And then I just couldn't look back on Windows with anything but disgust.

Windows sucks, I love open source, built my own computer didn't want to pay a 100$

For me, Windows 11 mandatory account, and Internet on setup. Yes there are bypasses, yes I could upgrade from 10. But where I'm from, having the internet isn't always a given.

So imagine dropping $500-$1000 on a new laptop booting it up for the first time, and learning that its now a brick since Windows refuses to let you use it since you have no internet. No Pro license can unbork you from this.

Even MacOS isn't that dumb (for now).

The account thing is a personal beef I have with windows. I.e. my PC my account, why does it need to be online, I have no reason for it.

So my plan was to migrate to FOSS or proper cross platform software for work, see if Linux works, and if it doesn't move to MacOS. So far Linux Mint has been stable.

I wanted to create a development environment, so Linux was the natural choice. Then I realized how great current Linux is after I struggled with it in the past. Nowadays I read daily of Microsofts fuckups and am so glad that it doesn't concern me anymore. I deleted my windows drive after half a year and turned it into another Linux machine for my living room (htpc). Best time to switch was yesterday. Second best time is today.

Funny that windows fucking your audio outputs is a big deal but ridiculous stutter in games in a highend machine is a minor inconvenience.

What did it in were the semi-annual mandatory feature updates, which restored the invasive settings and bloat I worked hard to remove. Already being acquainted with Linux at that point, I began dual-booting and later having Windows on an entirely separate machine for a few stubborn programs I needed for work.

What made me acquainted with Linux was looking for alternatives after the loss of theming options and the start menu in Windows 8. That eventually brought me to my present Debian setup with the Chicago 95 theme, which recreates (and even improved) the workflow and stability I had grown to love in Windows 2000.

The first time I ever booted into a Linux iso, however, was to migrate files off of my machine, which was excruciatingly slow to transfer files under XP.

Commodore going bankrupt.

My first programming experience, an online class, was in a Linux VM. Linux made programming easy and delightful, Windows always made it a huge pain. As time went on, more of what I did was easier on Linux, and now everything is.

Windows.

Late 1990s my uni had unix workstations HPUX.

So all projects etc were expected to be done on those. Linux at the time was the easy way to do it from home.

By the time I left uni in 98. I was so used to it windows was a pain in the butt.

For most of the time since I have been almost 100% linux. With just a dual boot to sort some hardware/firmware crap.

Ham radio to this day. Many products can only do updates with windows.

I started dual booting Linux after an upgrade to an insider preview of Windows 10 soft-bricked my Windows 7 install. I later stopped booting into Windows and eventually reclaimed the partitions to extend whatever distro was installed at that point when the actual release of Windows 10 decided to attempt automatically upgrading my Windows 7 system, soft-bricking it a second time. 2016 onwards, I haven't used Windows on my systems outside of occasionally booting LTSC in a VM.

Valve releasing Proton.

Privacy - the main reason. Besides for that were a lot of annoying and ridiculous reasons to switch like:

• BSOD in the middle of gaming/meeting/etc,

• forced updates that made it impossible to shutdown your pc without installing an update first

I could name further and further but those are the main reasons. Now I'm using Debian for 2 years and it is the best distro by far.

Ironically enough, it was gaming performance.

What makes this ironic was that this was months before the Steam Deck came out and I was not familiar with Wine and/or Proton in the slightest. I just thought, "If there are people running it as a daily driver, then it must be good enough at those things".

I'd say my transition over to Linux took years. I first learned of it when I had a laptop with 4GB RAM and 64GB Storage. When you're working with something that weak, you want to minimise wherever you can and it got to the point where the only way to reduce storage use to make this machine useful for some lighter games (also to reduce RAM usage to make the machine snappier than it was with Windows 10), waa to install Linux Mint, as it seemed like the best option. Later, when I got a new laptop of my own, I really got into digital privacy and running a Custom ROM on my phone (a practice that has continued to this day), which led me to the old familiar (well, not so familiar at the time because I was a noob who knew nothing), Linux. I played with Ubuntu, Mint and PopOS in Virtualbox and about 2 months after that (if I'm not mistaken), I bit the bullet and installed Mint. Now why didn't I do it earlier? I was busy with college. Why didn't I do it on the old machine, or over Christmas instead of 3 months later in March (2022)? Because I was scared I was going to mess up the partitioning, as I wanted to dual boot. So in March 2022, I switch, and proceed to use my Windows partition.... 2 times, until I completely wiped it because it was making my life more complicated than it needed to be and I wanted all 512 GB instead of the 128GB I managed to free from Windows' grasp. Now I had to set up temporary Windows partitions twice, where one time was about Excel (my machine wasn't powerful enough to do it in a VM, and I needed to use advanced features for college, that weren't available on Libreoffice or OnlyOffice. I don't remember the reasons for the second time anymore. I almost had to do that another 3rd time because under the same teacher in college, we had to use VS. Not Code, but Visual Studio. It is not available for Linux, and I didn't have my Windows partition at the time, so I ended up doing it in class on the college computers out of spite for Windows. These 2 scenarios really made me almost hate that teacher (her attitude and some people's dislike of her were not doing her any favours in my eye) but once I got to know her properly, she didn't match the perception of her that I was left with. Anyways, that's the story of how I switched to Linux.

I'm on Fedora now (With Hyprland). Though distros (mostly) don't matter. Peace,